Sour Spot
by MrTyeDye
Summary: What if the Loud siblings' skirmish for the Sweet Spot ended even more disastrously?


**Author's Note: This fic was written at the request of asperman1. Credit goes to him for the idea!**

"Good luck getting the Sweet Spot now. Ha ha ha ha ha!"

As Lincoln stomped up the stairs, the mocking laughter of his sisters played back in his head over and over again, each chortle making his blood pressure climb. By the time he reached his bedroom, he was practically a boiling tea kettle. The only thing stopping him from throwing an animalistic temper tantrum was the fear of provoking his parents' ire even further, and the knowledge that he'd need a good night's sleep if he wanted to have any chance of getting that coveted Sweet Spot.

Granted, he always felt that he was entitled to it; after all, he was the one who went through the trouble of mapping it out. But now, he absolutely, positively _had_ to have it. He wanted to take it all for himself and rub it in his sisters' smug faces, and then watch them all fume and seethe over it for the entirety of the road trip.

He'd show them.

* * *

As soon as Lincoln's digital clock struck 7, he barreled out of his room and into the hall, shrieking out a war cry. On his way to the stairwell, he was sideswiped by Luan, and responded by grabbing her by the face and shoving her backwards. He ended up nicking his finger on her braces, but at that point he was too high on adrenaline to care.

As soon as he burst out the door, he was dismayed to find that Lynn and Lori had beaten him to the van.

 _Of course_ , he thought. _The best athlete and the one with the longest legs._

The two of them were already engaged in a vicious wrestling match in Vanzilla's backseat, and he jumped into the fray, paying no mind to the fact that both of them were far bigger and stronger than he was.

The rest of the family joined the fight moments later, and from that point on Lincoln's vision was taken up by a discombobulated mass of flesh. He lashed out blindly at anyone who got close to him, throwing wild punches and kicks in the desperate hope that somehow, when the dust cleared, he would reign victorious.

The fight went on for some indeterminate amount of time, until it was abruptly cut short by an interjection from Luna:

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. Does anyone else hear that?"

Once the rest of the Louds quieted down, the first thing they heard was an ominous creaking sound coming from just outside the van. Then, the first thing they _felt_ was the even more ominous sensation of the vehicle lurching backwards.

In the midst of their brawl, a misplaced kick from Lynn struck Vanzilla's gear stick, shifting it from park to reverse. All of the Loud siblings clammed up and froze in their tracks once they realized that the van was moving back. As soon as the shock wore off, all ten of the Loud sisters dove out of the car, and Lincoln tried to follow suit.

"Tried" being the operative word here.

When he bolted for the car door, he felt a tough, leathery shackle entwined around his ankle. He looked down and, to his horror, saw one of the seatbelts wrapped around his left leg like a boa constrictor. His heart rate skyrocketed and sweat started pouring down his face as soon as the gravity of the situation set in. In a desperate panic, he grabbed his ankle with both hands and started pulling on it with all his might.

"H...help!" he shouted, his voice strained from the effort of trying to free his leg. To his relief, his efforts actually seemed to be paying off, as each tug loosened the seatbelt's bind on his limb. Emboldened by the progress, he started pulling harder, delighting in the feeling of the seatbelt's ever-weakening grip.

"What was that?" called a voice from just outside the van. "OH MY GOD, LINCOLN!"

By then, though, he was practically free. With one final sharp tug, Lincoln freed his leg from the tangled seatbelt.

But the sensation of having his leg liberated from the harsh leather bind was painfully short lived; a split second later, he was overpowered by the deafening blare of a car horn, followed by the even more deafening clatter of a car ramming into the side of Vanzilla. The impact sent Lincoln flying into the driver's seat, where he landed with a piercing crack.

The next hour for Lincoln was a terrifying, incoherent blur. An incessant, high-pitched ringing in his ears, a searing pain shooting up through his calf and knee, and the constant urge to faint kept only at bay by his hysterical sisters begging him to stay with them. He could only hear a few of them talking over the ringing, but what he heard would stay with him for the rest of the day.

"Lincoln?! Stay with us, bro!"

"Someone call 911!"

"DAD! MOM!"

After some indeterminate amount of time- it could have been anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, for all Lincoln could tell- the sound of an ambulance siren cut through the cacophony. He craned his neck up to see two neon-clad paramedics reaching down towards his prone body. They hoisted him up and carried him over onto a stretcher set up in the middle of the road, all while the sound of panicked cries and sobs filled the air. While he was being lowered onto the stretcher, Lincoln took a glance down at his agonized leg, and was nauseated by the sight of it contorted into a sickening jagged shape.

As the stretcher was loaded into the back of the ambulance, Lincoln overheard two of his sisters just outside the vehicle, begging the paramedics to the point of tears to let them ride in the back with him. His ears were still ringing a little, so he couldn't quite make out who they were. Before he even had time to guess, the ambulance doors swung open and the two eldest Louds, Lori and Leni, came bursting in. As soon as she got inside, Leni collapsed facefirst into Lincoln's chest.

"Linky..." she blubbered, letting her tears soak into his shirt. "My poor baby Linky... please be okay..."

Lincoln was a little stymied. The sight of the normally perky and happy-go-lucky teen so thoroughly broken was almost surreal. He used what little strength he had to wrap his arms around his big sister and stroke her hair, in a vain attempt to comfort her. The moment was cut short when a paramedic pulled her off and ordered her to give Lincoln his space.

After the sisters were given the standard warnings about keeping their seat belts secured, the ambulance drove off. Over the course of the ride to the hospital, the two of them never stopped trembling or sobbing. There was no doubt in his mind that they would blame themselves for this whole thing.

But did they really deserve to?

The ride over to the hospital gave Lincoln a long stretch of time to reflect back on the past couple days, uninterrupted. As he did, he felt his heart clutched by a pang of guilt, which only grew tighter as the ride progressed. By viewing the incident from a detached perspective, he was able to see just how selfish he was being. None of this would have happened if he wasn't so singlemindedly determined to keep the best seat in the van all to himself.

 _He_ started this.

 _He_ did this to himself.

 _He_ made Leni and Lori cry.

And now he was reaping what he sowed.

The heart-wrenching sound of his sisters' wailing was the last thing he heard before he passed into unconsciousness.

* * *

Lincoln awoke some indeterminate amount of time later to the sound of a beeping heart monitor beside him. Upon forcing his still-swollen eyes open, he found himself laid out in a hospital cot, with his damaged leg wrapped up in a cast and hung up in a sling. Around the bed were all ten of the Loud sisters, each one with red, dried out, puffy eyes and tear-moistened cheeks.

"H-hi, girls," he croaked.

It was then that he noticed the feeling of warm fur caressing his skin. He looked to his side to see his stuffed companion, Bun-Bun, tucked into the crook of his arm.

"Bun-Bun?" he said. "Who...?"

Luna smiled and gave him a wave.

"T...thanks, Luna."

As soon as he spoke, the second eldest sister's floodgates opened up again. With fresh tears pouring from her eyes, she collapsed onto the hospital bed and wrapped both of her arms around Lincoln's propped-up head.

"Oh, Linky, this is all our fault!" cried Leni. "Like, none of this would've happened if we just let you have the sweet spot. From now on, it's yours whenever you want it!"

Lincoln just shook his head. "N-no. I don't want that."

"And whenever you- wait, come again?"

Leni released her hug, backed up and gave Lincoln a befuddled look. The rest of his sisters looked just as surprised.

"It... it's not all your fault," Lincoln continued. "I was fighting over it too. I shouldn't have tried to keep it from all of you."

"False equivalence, dear brother," said Lisa. "We may have all been fighting over it, but we came out of it unscathed. You did not."

"Lisa's right," said Luna. She stepped up to his bedside and started running her fingers through his hair. "I mean, _look_ at you. I've never seen you lookin' so bad, my funky one." She then bent over and planted a kiss on Lincoln's bruised cheek, letting some of her tears trickle down onto his face as she did.

"I appreciate that," said Lincoln. "But that could've been any one of us. I was just the only one too slow to get out of the car." He capped off his remark with a rough, throaty chuckle. "Speaking of which, what'd the doctor say? Am I gonna be okay?"

"We don't know," said Lynn. "Mom and Dad are talking to the doctor right now. If you ask me, though, it looks like a typical leg fracture. Which is, you know, not _good_ , but it's nothing your body can't bounce back from."

"Well, that's reassuring," Lincoln said with a pained grunt. "Doesn't make my leg hurt any less, though."

Lynn drew closer to Lincoln's bed, her eyes imbued with a tenderness that he was unused to seeing from her. "Trust me, Linc, I get it. You know how many times I've been in here for broken bones? _Lots_. And each time, my body was good as new after a few weeks. The human body's an amazing thing."

She bent down and wrapped her arms around her bedridden brother. "Just promise me you won't take too long," she whispered. "I want my little brother back."

Seconds later, she was joined by Leni, and then Lori, and then Luna, and then each of his other sisters in quick succession. Before long, all of them were wrapped tightly around their brother (sans Lily, who had opted to crawl onto the bed and snuggle up to Lincoln's chest). It was like he was wearing the warmest, heaviest, most comforting blanket ever woven.

"I... love you girls," Lincoln choked out, getting a little misty-eyed himself. "I know I don't say that often enough, but I do."

"We love you too, Lincoln," whispered Lori.

It was then that the hospital room saw the arrival of Rita and Lynn Sr. - who, by the looks of it, had also spent the bulk of the ride to the hospital in tears. Rita ran up to the bed, shoved her way past several of her daughters and started smothering her only son with kisses.

"Oh, Lincoln, we've been worried sick about you!" cried Rita. "How are you feeling, honey pie?"

Lincoln gave his mother a faint smile. "I think I'm all right," he said. "Leg still hurts, but other than that, I feel okay. What did the doctor say?"

Lynn Sr. took a deep breath and wiped both of his eyes dry before responding. "Well, champ, the bad news is that you've got a broken leg. It'll take about eight weeks for it to heal."

Lincoln groaned at the prospect of being bedridden for two months.

"The good news is that it could've been a lot worse," he continued. "The doctor said a crash like that should've broken a lot more than just your leg."

He looked down at Lincoln, donning a slight hint of a smirk. "All things considered, you're a pretty lucky kid."

Lincoln let out another hoarse-sounding chuckle. "Yeah, I guess I am."

Lynn Sr.'s quasi-smirk widened into a full smile as he bent down and gave his son's hair a good ruffling. "You'll get through this, Linc. You're made of stern stuff."

Lincoln, having barely any energy left to speak, just returned the smile and nodded. He never really thought of himself as a "tough" kid - especially not when he had Lynn and Lana to compare himself to - so getting that kind of compliment from his old man was pretty gratifying.

Lynn's face hardened as he rose from Lincoln's bedside and turned to address the ten Loud sisters. "As for you," he said, "I hope you've learned a valuable lesson from this experience."

"We have, daddy," said Leni, putting on her bravest face possible. "From now on, we're going to share the Sweet Spot, and-"

"Excuse me?"

Rita joined her husband's side, sporting an icy glare and a stern glower etched across her face. "If you think that any of you are getting the 'sweet spot' - or _any_ spot - anytime soon, you've got another thing coming."

"Another _think_ coming," corrected Lisa.

Rita shot the young genius a dirty look before continuing. "After the way you all behaved this morning, you can forget about having another road trip for a long time. In fact, you're all grounded for two weeks."

The Loud sisters responded by hanging their heads in shame, silently accepting their fate.

"You will all be entitled to see Lincoln in the hospital during visiting hours, but other than that, you will only be allowed to leave the house for school. Is that clear?"

"Yes, mom," the sisters said in unison.

"W-what about me?" croaked a timid voice from just behind Rita. "Am I grounded too?"

Rita cast a stern look in Lincoln's direction. "I think you've been punished enough."

Her expression softened as she turned back towards the rest of the family. "What's important is that you all _learn_ something from this. I don't want to see you letting something this silly and this trivial come between you. Understand?"

She received solemn nods from all eleven of her children.

"Good."

For the next eight weeks, the ladies of the Loud house took turns treating their sole brother like a prince. Despite his insistence that he was just as much to blame as anyone else, it was hard to argue that he wasn't the victim when he was hospital-bound with his leg in a cast. As such, all of them made it their mission to make his stay at the hospital as pleasant as it could possibly be.

Lori texted him every day to check up on him, Leni knit him a vibrant multicolored hospital gown, Luna played him soothing songs on her guitar, Luan told him her best jokes ("Laughter is the best medicine!"), Lynn taught him some exercises to do daily to prevent bedsores, Lucy read to him from her poetry diary, Lana brought in her pet reptiles to keep him company, Lola brought in her dolls and stuffed animals for the same purpose, Lisa developed a serum that accelerated the bone healing process (thus shortening his stay by one week), and Lily brightened up his day with cuddles and kisses. As much as it sucked to be cooped up in a hospital for so long, Lincoln had to admit that he rather enjoyed being spoiled like this.

That said, he and his sisters _did_ learn their lesson. From that day forward, they made a vow to change the way they viewed each other: not as adversaries to outmuscle, outmaneuver or outwit, but as friends, companions and mentors. True, they'd still fight now and then, as siblings are wont to do, but they promised never to let something as petty as van seating divide them so thoroughly.

Not that they'd have the liberty to argue about van seating anyway, since Vanzilla was completely totaled by the crash. Oh, well. Such is life.


End file.
